History

The Cascadia Poetry Festival is a result of 20 years of organizing poetry events and conducting interviews on Whole Systems approaches. Founding Director Paul Nelson first learned of the concept of bioregionalism in 1994 when he interviewed Peter Berg of the Planet Drum Foundation.

The notion of considering natural and cultural boundaries, rather than arbitrary political ones, is a key theme in the work of Gary Snyder. (See Trevor Carolan’s interview linked here.) We believe that it is an inherently political act to focus energy in bioregional and cultural communities and thus the effort to connect with poets and writers from Cascadia, the bioregion in which we live.